Pain Subsides in the Conscious Mind
by LeviAckerman42
Summary: Revisiting the very reason of your guilt is the hardest thing to do. Can you reason with yourself that it means nothing, or will you fight your conscious mind to remind yourself of the horrors you encountered with the guilt you harbor? Built up tension towards yourself leads to stress...but a breakdown can cause more damage than you might know.


**Spoilers for anyone not quite at episode twenty-one/twenty-two (not sure which chapters they are.) Feel free to read if you are willing to come back to this fic after you have finished watching these episodes or are willing to spoil them.**

No one understood the torment he faced. They would always tease and prod at his heart, asking personal questions like why he acted OCD. He never wanted to reveal his truth and only shrugged it away to conceal his feelings like he always did.

Growing up as he had, it had always bothered Levi to become dirty. He wouldn't play with children at all and nearly died of disgust in the corps, along with being covered in Titan blood. Dirt reminded him of forests; blood reminded him of her...

His heart leaped inside of his chest at the thought of Petra. "Levi," Hanji's questioning voice knocked him out of his trance. "Levi are you alright?" Her face was caring towards him, he could tell by her widening eyes at the smallest show of his emotion. His head turned to the side, eyes closed. He breathed in sharply, trying to forget the forest in which they had just left, being the same one Petra died in.

"Were you hurt?" She reached out to touch his arm, slipping off of her horse slightly and touching his bare hand. Levi's entire body shuddered as he could feel the tiny germs spreading across his hand. His mind urged him to throw up at the sick feeling of squirming particles, but he stayed calm. He took out his cleaning rag and wiped his hand.

He had become noticeably worse ever since he saw her lying against a tree. She might have been the only thing holding him back from insanity. "I wasn't hurt," he responded quickly.

Hanji turned away, knowing the captain was obviously disturbed by something, but she never knew. No one did. Levi was just too silent and unshowing, but everyone knew something was wrong.

His hands couldn't stop themselves. Everything was out of place, books were the wrong color and not alphabetical, he could see particles of dust and feel them touch his skin. He had been cleaning for hours and although it could not be cleaned better, he had to clean more.

Levi was now a mindless zombie that was victim to anxiety and obsessiveness. A beam of light scattered through the room which shone on the dust that scattered the air. "Oh God..." He reached for the still dirty wall and slid down it in despair. "Oh God I'm breathing it in."

Levi reached for a scarf and instantly felt his own germs squirming onto him. He dropped it and couldn't pick it back up. He didn't want to touch the infected scarf, but it was an abnormality in what looked like a now destroyed room to him. He reduced his breath to short gasps and parked himself in the middle of the room, grasping his knees for dear life. Levi wanted to pull his hair out because of how much the room bothered him. He laid his head in his knees and blocked out the infected world around him.

"Levi! Levi!"

Hanji knocked on his door with such force that he heard it crack. Her knocking wasn't in perfect rhythm. Levi cringed and grasped his knees even tighter. "Levi it's time to go! You never sleep in late! Levi?"

The knob clicked and the door creaked open to reveal a shaded and hunched figure, making short gasps and clutching his knees. "Oh God!" He heard the uneven sound of her feet hitting the floor as she put her arms around him in sympathy. "Don't touch me," he pleaded. "Don't touch me..."

**I really do feel bad for Levi, especially after seeing that horrible face he made while watching Petra be thrown out of the cart in order to make a lighter load. I do, however, feel the man's pain as I am OCD as well. This really made the fanfic easier to write, knowing what it feels like to be touched. For all of the agoraphobics out there (you know who you are, people with a fear of closed spaces), the reason that Levi is seated in the middle of the room at the end of the fic is because of the germs on the walls. Yes, the floor is not any better, but he will be touching more germs if propped up against the wall. Thank you for reading, and I encourage you to read my latest fic, The War Begins Inside! **


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